At the moment I am mainly interested in the role of population structure, ecologically relevant genetic variation and phenotypic divergence in reaction to environmental change in alpine ecosystems, as these are the main points of the larger SNF funded project in which my Master thesis project is embedded. More precisely, the aim of my Master project is to study reproductive strategies, fine-scale spatial genetic structure and patterns of gene dispersal in the long-lived alpine shrub Salix herbacea.